HOLDING WATER

Holding Water started with a phrase I grew up hearing in the Black community:
“Boy, you can’t hold water.”

Usually it meant somebody couldn’t keep a secret. They’d hear something on the porch, at the cookout, after church, or in the beauty shop — and by the next morning everybody knew. It was funny, human, and deeply communal. But the older I got, the more I started thinking about what it really means to “hold water.”

Water carries memory. Water carries stories. Water carries survival.

Holding Water is a multidisciplinary storytelling project built around uncovering and preserving the stories communities carry — especially the ones that rarely get written down. Through music, documentary storytelling, poetry, conversation, food, field recordings, and collaboration with local artists and elders, the project explores the emotional and cultural memory held within neighborhoods, families, traditions, and everyday Black life.

For generations, many of our stories were kept quiet for survival, forgotten through displacement, or treated like they didn’t matter. Holding Water is about creating spaces where those stories can finally breathe. Not just stories about struggle, but stories about joy, humor, beauty, faith, creativity, love, resilience, and belonging.

At its core, Holding Water asks:
What happens when communities are finally allowed to tell the truth about who they are — in their own voice?